Eurogamer: Sony development bigwig George Bain has said the PlayStation 2 is “effectively an open platform” in Europe.

“You no longer have to submit a game for content approval,” Bain told a throng of Euro developers, according to GameDaily.

The idea behind the move is to encourage regional developers to be able to make “low-development cost titles and release them in their market”, he said, using India and Russia as examples.

And while development kits can be costly, Sony has often been known to loan them for the duration of a project.

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PC World: Dissecting sales figures can be a little like making sense of a gyrating Rubik’s Cube. Case in point: Nintendo ’s just claimed it beat Sony’s 18 month sales record after tipping past 50 million games sold on or around May 19, 2008. By comparison, claims Nintendo, Sony only sold around 42 million its first 18 month at bat.

While that may be true, it misleadingly suggests the Wii’s winning the software war, which it isn’t. In fact, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 continues to outsell the Wii in year over year totals. That’s the case even if you count the 11.2 million “sales” of the system’s bundled Wii Sports game, which Nintendo keeps claiming as part of the deal.

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vnunet: Sony’s PlayStation 3 has sold over a million units in the UK since its European launch on 23 March 2007.

The sales figure was achieved in 47 weeks, beating the previous record set by the PS2 which took 50 weeks to reach the one million milestone in the UK.

Sony also managed to beat Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which took 60 weeks, but comes nowhere near the runaway success of Nintendo’s Wii which reached a million UK sales in just 38 weeks.

Entertainment market research firm ChartTrack also revealed that the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 for the past month, although they were “neck and neck over the Christmas period”.

At the current rate the number of gamers in Europe with a PS3 will overtake those with an Xbox 360 this year.

Sony announced in June 2007 that PS3 sales had reached one million across the whole of Europe in just nine and a half weeks.

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Eurogamer: Electronic Arts believes up to four times more PS3s than Xbox 360 consoles will be sold in Europe this year, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

In a new report, the publisher has predicted a Sony surge into second place behind Nintendo and the Wii.

In Europe EA expects the PS3 to sell between 5 million and 6 million units, compared to just 1.5 million to 2.5 million for the Xbox 360.

While the company thinks the two will tie in North America on 4.5 million to 5.5 million unit sales, the two sets of numbers combined give Sony’s flagship console a compelling 3.5 million lead.

However, the report points to Wii as overall winner, with a combined figure of between 12 million and 14 million for the two regions. The PS2 is expected to shift between 3.9 million and 4.9 million units.

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Absolute Gadget: Thrustmaster have launched a pad that will work for your PS3, PS2 and your PC. The Dual Trigger 3 in 1 controller features all the usual buttons you would expect from a Playstation pad, including mini-sticks and the home button for PS3 owners.  

Just like the official PS3 pad it also features 6 axes. A switch on the underside of the pad allows you to switch between PC and console without having to change any settings on the pad itself.There is also a mapping function allowing gamers to save their own control configurations thanks to the pad’s internal memory. This will no doubt come in useful when your annoying friend who changes the whole button layout to play Tekken visits. 

A preset button will allow said chum to switch to their preferred configuration at the touch of a button.

Dual 3 in 1 Trigger pad pc PS2 PS3 Thrustmaster

Engadget: Unlike Microsoft, which dropped the original Xbox in favor of the Xbox 360 in manner similar to Paris Hilton dropping her old cellphone, Sony has continued to maintain the PlayStation 2.

Somehow, Sony has managed to make a new iteration of the PS2 that decreases the console’s weight by almost a third: they’ve trimmed the console itself down to 600 grams from 900 grams, and the power adapter to 250 grams from 350 grams.

The external design of the console is unchanged, but the lower weight and the new components should decrease production and shipping costs.

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